Читать книгу Blue Sunday - Irma Venter - Страница 5

Wednesday, 7 February, 19:14

The front door swings open without a sound when I release the latch. I stop for a moment and listen to the weavers in the swaying leopard trees above, heavy with nests, complain as if I’m an intruder. As if they want to warn the family that lives here that an uninvited guest has arrived.

Too late for that now.

I kick off my comfortable black shoes, bend down and roll white protective shoe covers over my socks. Pull on latex gloves and get rid of my jacket. The evening offers little relief from the heat and there’s no one around to get jumpy when they see my police-issue Z88 pistol.

I tie my hair in a ponytail and step into the entrance hall of the spacious double-storey house in Brooklyn.

The weavers are screaming blue murder.

Inside the house there’s less dust than I would have imagined, considering the place has been closed up for six weeks. The smell also surprises me. Lemon and lavender. Not even a whiff of the sweat or blood I would have expected, the claustrophobic panic of people fleeing violence.

I switch on the living-room light and search for the source of the smell. Find it on the TV cabinet: an aerosol that intermittently pumps perfume into the air. Shhht, it says as I walk by, the scent sharp in my nose, the spray misting down on me.

I walk past the leather couch, the Christmas tree still flickering red-yellow-green. Past the kitchen. I step carefully over the blood – so much blood – on the stairs. Smeared on the walls.

Almost black now – it hasn’t been red for some time.

I head for the first floor, towards one of this case’s biggest mysteries. The one that struck me first when I received the dossier this morning.

First door on the left. Cath van Zyl’s room. I switch the light on, sit down on the unmade bed. The snow-white bedding still looks brand new.

On the wall opposite the bed are two framed black-and-white photographs of the American ballerina Misty Copeland, visible from every angle, whether you’re lying in bed or getting changed at the cupboard. The one in which she is looking directly at the camera is signed. Written on the other one in thick black letters are the words I CAN. A poster advertising a performance of Giselle in London hangs above the bed.

I get up and walk to the window. Open it. There’s no burglar-proofing in the wooden frame here on the first floor of the house. My one-bedroom flat on the tenth floor in Hatfield has Trellidors everywhere, even on the windows that don’t open. Probably a police thing. And maybe it’s necessary in Hatfield, but definitely not here in the Stables Estate with its 25 luxury houses on huge plots, and its 24-hour patrols.

I lean out, looking for signs that the Van Zyls’ only daughter escaped through this window during the attack. The three-car garage roof is just under the window, up against the house, two, three metres down.

Cath van Zyl is young and athletic – the jump would have been no effort.

That’s if she fled and wasn’t kidnapped, as the dossier suggests.

I look again but can’t make out anything unusual in the streetlamp’s dim light. No broken roof tiles or scraps of clothing.

I can’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t kidnapped. Someone would have heard something by now.

No, something else happened here.

The darkness surprises me. When did the sun go down? I look at my watch. It’s half past seven.

I yawn. Time to go home. I’ll come back tomorrow.

I pull the gloves off and push them into my jeans pocket as I walk downstairs. On the surface, everything is just as it was the Sunday night the Van Zyls disappeared.

No, the night Lafras van Zyl was left for dead and his family disappeared.

Katerien, Willem and Cath van Zyl. Vanished.